Turning the other cheek The Gospel and Les Miserables
Victor Hugo’s great novel Les Misérables is employed to throw light on the ideal and complexity of Jesus’ extraordinary saying about turning the other cheek.
Sermon by the Rev’d Charles Waldegrave at St Peter’s, Wellington
23 February 2025
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That was a pretty tough Gospel we had this morning. “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.” (Luke 6. 29). Let’s up-date this message a bit. That’s like saying, If someone scams your current account, give them your savings account as well.” Oooh ouch, that hurts just thinking bout it. Is that what Jesus meant? Is this for real?
It is also like saying to Ukrainian people, Russia has taken Crimea and much of the Donbas region, offer them Kiev as well. Earlier, he had said, “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6. 27-28) How does that go down in Ukraine? Is this fair? Is it sensible? He also said, “If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.”
Well, had Jesus lost the plot here, or was the message deeper and more complex than a cursory or quick reading might imply? Was he being literal, or was he exaggerating, using hyperbole to make a point? Was he trying to point to another way of looking at relationships and how we treat each other. All of these things have been debated since he first said these words.
Jesus wasn’t a literalist. He often spoke in parables. These were stories, narratives if you like, that captured people’s interest and expressed a point he was trying to get across without him saying it directly.
After agreeing with a lawyer, for example, that the essence of faith is about loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself, he told the story of the Good Samaritan. At that time most Jews hated Samaritans and most Samaritans hated Jews. There were many reasons for this which I don’t have time to go into here. It is suffice to say events by both peoples took place that deeply upset the others. Jews upset Samaritans and Samaritans upset Jews.
On that occasion, Jesus didn’t tell people directly that they needed to be more forgiving of each other. He simply told the parable of the Good Samaritan where the person who was kind to the man attacked by thieves was a Samaritan, and he helped a Jew despite the distrust and hatred between the two peoples. By contrast, their religious leaders walked past the man and left him suffering. People would have been astounded that he was actually implying in the story that a despised Samaritan was closer to God than their own religious leaders because he showed both love and mercy. He loved his enemy! He turned his other cheek!
The French novelist Victor Hugo told a wonderful story about love, forgiveness, mercy and justice in one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century, and probably of all time in his book Les Miserable. Like Dickens in England, at much the same time, he wanted to show how unfair and unjust French society was to the lower classes where most people lived. How the structures in that society constantly turned good and innocent people into beggars and criminals in a way that ruined their lives. He particularly wanted to see reforms in education, criminal justice, and the treatment of women.
As with Jesus, Hugo didn’t usually tell people what he considered was needed directly. He told wonderful stories that left people to think of the implications. Les Miserable has so captured people’s imagination, that it has been adapted to film, television, the stage, and of course the famous musical. There have been multiple adaptions of these various media. I have only time to tell parts of the story.
It begins with Jean Valjean who had just served nineteen years on a chain gang in a local prison in France. He had been sentenced to 5-years for stealing bread for his starving sister and her family, and then received 14 more years for numerous attempted escapes. Since his release, he had been constantly turned away by innkeepers because he had to carry a yellow passport that states he was a former convict. He sleeps on the street, and is angry and bitter.
The local Bishop of Digne gives Jean shelter in his house when no one else will. However, at night he steals some of the silverware and runs off. The police later capture him with the silverware. He lies and says they were a gift from the Bishop. The police take him to the Bishop to check his story, and the Bishop pretends he had given the silverware in order to protect Jean. The police accept the story. The Bishop then lets him keep the silverware and gives him two silver candlesticks in addition, suggesting he had forgotten to take them. Jean Valjean realises he has been given a chance to regain his soul. The Bishop says he should use money from the silver candlesticks to make an honest man of himself. He decides to start a new life. He changes his identity, breaks parole, and rips up the yellow card.
To cut a long story with many sub-plots short, 8 years later Jean is a factory owner and mayor of a small town. One of the workers in the factory is a woman named Fantine. She has a secret illegitimate child named Cosette living with a nasty innkeeper and his family in another town. Her secret is then discovered by the other women in the factory and they demand she be dismissed. The foreman, whose advances she had earlier rejected, fires her.
She has no income and needs to pay for medicine for her sick daughter. She sells a locket, then all her hair, and eventually becomes a prostitute. Her new profession disgusts her and when she refuses a prospective customer, he claims she attacked him. She was about to be sent to prison as a result of this accusation, when the Mayor Jean Valjean steps in and insists she be sent to hospital instead. He recognised her from when she worked in his factory and promises to help her. But Fantine is dying, so Jean promises to take care of Cosette.
Cosette by this time had lived with the innkeeper’s family for 5 years and had been treated very badly. Jean pays them off and takes Cosette away. He looks after her really well but doesn’t tell her about his past. 9-years later they are in Paris and Cosette and a student Marius have fallen in love. Marius is involved in a just student uprising against the Authorities. After various battles, most of the students are killed. However, Marius survives because Jean Valjean saves him, although he was too wounded to know. The lovers then marry and through a series of events they both learn about Jean’s past and all the ways he has cared for them and Cosette’s mother. Jean then dies peacefully and is joined by the spirit of Fantine and those who had passed in the student uprising.
I have shared parts of this novel because they help us understand the style of Jesus’ teaching in our gospel today. As Jesus spoke in parables, Victor Hugo spoke in novels and poetry.
When the Bishop of Digne had his silverware stolen, he offered the silver candlesticks as well. Let me repeat that because it parallels the Gospel call. When the Bishop of Digne had his silverware stolen, he offered the silver candlesticks as well.
The action changed a man’s life because he experienced mercy and forgiveness. Having found a place in society where he was accepted, he then showed mercy himself, when he promised Fantine when she was dying, that he would look after and protect Cosette. He did so, and she in turn was able to escape poverty, gain an education and live a secure life.
Had the Bishop confirmed the theft of the silverware, an angry man who had already been badly betrayed by society, would have been returned to prison. In that story, Fantine would have died with a broken heart for her daughter and a sense of betrayal by all those around her. Cosette would have been condemned to poverty and maltreatment with little hope of any upward social mobility.
When Jesus said, “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also” and “If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.” I am quite sure he wasn’t speaking literally about every time we are struck or someone steals our possessions. I think he was saying something like, don’t move quickly to simply defend yourself and punish the person. We need to try and understand what is going on for them and address that. We should de-centre ourselves and our own wishes. If someone stoops as low as common assault, they obviously have problems. Payback and revenge can extend the conflict. Imprisonment often turns into a school for crime and future criminal activities. These are not always constructive ways to address the problem.
This is not to say, there is no place for prisons, nor that we should allow assault and theft. Jesus lived in a society much more like Victor Hugo’s, than ours today, where poorer people could be judged and imprisoned very quickly and very unfairly. The stories of some of the petty crimes, convicts were sent to Australia for, also come to mind. There was no opportunity for redress.
Although Jesus told us to love our enemies, he also said in a different context, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” If he considered something was unjust, he too could be quite prescriptive, and withering.
There isn’t a correct answer for understanding these difficult passages. They simply lift us to an ideal which we should chew on as Victor Hugo did so brilliantly. The context will always be important, as will be the life of the person who slaps us or steals from us. Somehow, we have to get beyond ourselves and our possessions and look for the greatest common good. Generosity, love and mercy reflect the character of God. That’s a great place to start when weighing these matters.